Brightly Dead Leaves
by Purple Lex
Summary: Submission to the Sylaire Committee's 'Till the end of time' challenge. AU from 'An Invisible Thread', Claire has a surprise visitor thirty years into the future who inadvertently helps her come to grips with the looming truth of her immortality. Sylar/Claire, sort-of-friendship; slight romantic undertones. One-shot.


**A/N:** Hello there! This is my submission for the Sylaire Committee's 'Till the end of time' challenge. It's our first one and I'm really eager for it – join in, join in _now_! I encourage all Sylaire fans to check our committee page out – it's sylaire committee dot tumblr dot com. And even if you're just a Heroes fan, please check it out too because we do rewatches! The Committee was conceived between me and fellow FF writer julyisfree as a place where we can widely express our Sylaire love through quotes, fan art, and the like. We need a Sylaire go-to place for fanfiction _and everything else_! Check it out C:

Alright, so I was originally going to do a really dark piece (julyisfree knows what I'm talking about) but then I had a bit of a writer's block with it so I started fiddling around with fan art in Photoshop and got this idea; it's kind of a scene/conversation collage, of sorts – you'll see what I mean.

Occasional swearing in this because... Well, I'm a swearer and though it's not in my ficlets much, it just felt natural writing it. So sorry for any of those offended! I figured someone annoyed at life, like Claire is, is allowed to swear ;P

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to Heroes, nor do I have any affiliation with it beyond being a fan and part of the viewing audience. **

**XxxxxxxxxxX**

_One, two, one, two, one, two._ One foot in front of the other, step after step. It was amazing what her body could endure. This physical exertion every day, twice a day, was tame compared to what she had experienced for the last thirty years. Now she was walking; then she was running. Running physically and mentally, reaching the point that stopping for sleep and edible consumption was a waste, a privilege she only watched on with a sense of bitterness that normal people – _obl__ivious people_ – were able to experience. All the running showed her how her body was able to hone itself like a finely tuned machine, managing to always make the most out of its resources. Her body was a camel without the odd, clumsy shape.

Despite that aspect of her ability, there had been quite a few times that her skin had hallowed and shrunken, hue paling and bones showing through. However, one burger digested into her system changed that – suddenly she was the warm-glowing, plump ex-cheerleader. Her rapid cellular regeneration, though, could not so easily fix the mental 'trauma' from running. That was what everyone had called it – _trauma_. Even Peter, _honest-to-a-fault Peter_. She expected it from her dad – he only wished to protect her. Funny, then, that he hadn't protected her from 'Nathan' all those years ago.

Only it wasn't Nathan. No, her grandmother had thought up the _brilliant_ plan of mentally screwing up the serial killer Sylar into oblivion, molding his psychopathic brain into thinking he was the great Senator and rising star in politics named Nathan Petrelli, _her_ biological father. Claire shivered even now. She would never forgive her grandmother for that, despite the fact that she still loved and missed the now-deceased woman. Whereas Peter was honest-to-a-fault, Angela was blunt-to-a-fault. She missed that now. Angela was the only one to tell her the brutal truth and get her to safety immediately when the shit hit the fan.

Their – her dad, Angela, and Matt Parkman's – plan had not worked as well as they wanted; once again, they underestimated the skull-slicing boogeyman. His psyche was much more powerful than they ever gave him credit for. She could relate to that, in a way – a part of him had been aware and fought for control again. She had felt that helpless before, one instance standing out quite starkly in her memory – ironic that it was the day Sylar had absorbed her immortality ability. Sylar accidentally shapeshifting on live television, as well as in front of most of the Senate, was not 'ideal', as Angela had put it.

The truth came out when no one expected it. It took several weeks for the world to wrap their head around what they had seen, several testifying firmly that it truly_ did occur_. To Sylar's credit, he quickly retreated from the media's eye and went underground – after promising vengeance on them, of course. The real problem was that once one's mind is open to certain possibilities, certain triggers, _certain images_, they cannot un-see those. They begin to look – whether pointedly or subconsciously – everywhere for more signs. And people _found_ them.

Even now, settling in a cabin in the middle of a path of woods more than fifty miles deep in each direction, she couldn't break her instincts. Rubber sneaker soles crunching against bright orange oak leaves, Claire kept her gaze alert.

The government had cracked down on them 34 years and seven some-odd months ago. She knew the exact date – wrote it and rewrote it in the diaries she now kept in an attempt to keep herself _sane_, her memory _fresh_. Too many nights spent in crappy motel rooms or short-term apartments, crouched in the shadows beside the windowsill with eyes widely alert for danger, had seeded doubt within her. Hours began to run together, just as they did with anyone else, but then so did the days, then the weeks, then the months. A whole year passed – the ninth year straight that she had been running – without her even noticing that the numbers switched from 2019 to 2020.

Memory is _important_. Memory is _everything_ that makes her who she is.

Claire zipped her jacket up further, increasing the tempo of her steps. She kicked a rock aside; its appearance on the pathway was new. Looking around, she saw the incline to her right had been disturbed. That could mean two things – either rill erosion occurred from the rain last night, small streams of runoff moving the rocks downward, or someone came by recently. Maybe a hunter, maybe a soldier dressed in black padding clutching a semi-automatic assault rifle. Whichever it was, it wasn't _good_. At the very least she would have to talk to someone, use her cover-story and remember who it was she talked to in case they turned out to be a nuisance or threat; at most she would have to dirty the blade strapped to her hip, possibly shoot a few more. If the latter happened, that also meant she would have to move. _Again_. That was a tiring process she wished to forgo.

She came to a halt as she rounded the pathway's bend, nearly instantly processing his figure. Her hand snaked to her side, gripping the hilt just in case. Sitting there on the stump half-trunk of a split tree, he only leisurely raised his head, shoulders straightening at her arrival. He took in her stray hand's movement without as much as a raised eyebrow. "Hello, Claire," he greeted casually.

She scanned her eyes amongst the surrounding trees and bushes once more. Even as she did so, she knew he would never team up with government agents, especially in this day and age where by the influence of only _normal people_ the government was losing their footing on their tracking and detaining methods. That was the thing with the human psyche – even if they were indoctrinated to believe something or someone was wrong, if enough time passed and they saw the object of hate then become frail, things – elder people, in this case – then your mind slowly shifted into its nurturing mode, doubt springing up inside the mind as naturally as the trees lose their leaves when the cold encroaches.

If it wasn't for the fact that she was a fellow Special, she knew he wouldn't give her over to them solely for the fact that she was a fellow _immortal_. If they could figure out how to do the medical equivalent of putting her on ice then that threatened him and his very _livable_ existence. Claire returned her gaze to his, locking confidence with stone of her own. "Sylar."

He cocked his head to the side. "It's been a while."

Holding back a snort, she responded dully, "That's the biggest understatement I've heard in a long time."

He gestured to the landscape around them with his left hand. "I guess you don't socialize much... You're a hard person to find."

She shifted on her feet, turning sideways away from him so she could take flight at any moment. Instincts molded not by him, but by the _past_. And to think that once there was a time when he was the biggest threat to her; now here they were, each on the run, practically having a tea party together. "I'll take that as a compliment."

Sylar's lips morphed into a tiny smirk.

Claire sighed. "What do you _want_, Sylar?"

"It's been a long time since someone's called me that," he remarked thoughtfully, standing.

She took a step back in response to his own movements. "I know the feeling."

Staring at her for a long moment, his eyelids then blinked in rapid succession for a few seconds, coffee-colored brown orbs landing somewhere on her shoulder. He reached an arm up, chicken-wing style, and rubbed across the back of his neck. She easily recognized the move; he was uncomfortable. "I heard about Noah." Claire finally looked away from him and back down the path towards her commandeered cabin. Tears sprung to her eyes. She wouldn't let him see them. "I'm sorry."

Her eyelids snapped closed, skin rippling from the pressure.

There were many times that the man in front of her now had tried to kill her dad. There were many times other people, other Specials, had tried to kill her dad, with or without her knowing. And yet he was taken down by a _heart_-_attack_ while helping Peter get Specials to safety. He hadn't supported what Peter was doing but he hadn't supported the government, either. There and then had been the time to ultimately take sides – and he had taken _hers_.

And he hadn't died heroically for it; he had died because a small microscopic piece of plaque broke off from the walls of his heart and said vital organ accidentally attacked itself from the inside out.

It wasn't _fair_.

Claire ran a forefinger under her eyelashes, wiping away the pooling water as the sadness crept up along the edges of her psyche. She was tired of all of it – the running, the hiding, the grieving. She was only just beginning her eternity of living but she wasn't sure, if it was all going to keep going just as it is going now, that she would be able to deal with it, to take breath after breath without eventually screaming. "How long has it been since you've last killed?" She asked abruptly, glancing towards him out of the corner of her eye.

Sylar stuffed his hands in his pockets, leaning back against the old tree. In the quiet forest, she could easily hear how his jean jacket scraped against the rough, peeling bark. "Two years, eight months, and thirteen days," he rattled off stoically, as if he was reading from a piece of paper.

She nodded. Whether it was the truth or a lie really didn't matter at the moment. It wasn't long in the scheme of things – two years was nothing to her now. Two years passed in the blink of an eye, the time it took her to truly relax as she sat on the lake's dock located a mile behind her. But it was _something_.

She wasn't much of a hopeful person anymore – hope brought you zilch and it only got you caught faster – but she was willing to raise those delusions now. He had made a comment about her lack of socializing. The truth was, he wasn't that far off – it had been fifteen months since she had talked to anyone, _anyone at al__l_. Not even a passing comment to a salesman or a counter clerk between that period.

Claire cast one last look to the tall cabin on the path behind her before moving forward, continuing on. "Walk with me."

* * *

Her treks kept around her a semblance of routine and routine kept her content after so much uncertainty clouding over her for so long. Twice a day, roughly an hour and a half long each time. The path she used ran in a lazy, meandering loop from her cabin, out to a cliff edge to the northeast, along to the west until hitting a stream, which she then followed back to the lake near where she inhabited.

Claire never really – completely and utterly – lost herself in it, though. The pathway to the cliff was the only obviously marked one, keeping her alert for hunters and hikers. The cliff gave her perspective down to the farmland that began after an estimated hundred foot drop, giving her an idea of the population rate in the area; if it increased significantly, eventually bringing with it land developments that would repeat the cycle further, she would move again. The stream kept her constantly on the lookout for the wildlife she lived off of from time to time now, as well as for more _expert_ hunters, ones that would use the water to lose their scent. The lake brought with it apprehension as she then thereafter went through a fifteen minute check of the cabin, making sure it wasn't compromised.

These walks were the only thing she did to reach a sense of _peace_. It was a lonely, depressing life. And she would only admit that to herself.

"Did you pick this place yourself?" Sylar asked, shattering the quaint silence that had descended.

Claire turned her neck, looking at him instead of at the vibrant autumn leaves covering the barren and dry ground. "Yeah... Peter caught word of a partnership against Specials between Canada and the US, so he started moving everyone out of Montreal, where I was at. I went solo after that."

"I could tell. It's so... bright. _Cheery_." He breathed deeply, making a sound similar to that of a huff. A crook of a smile curved his lips. "Only you could pick a place where even the dead leaves are bright."

She shook her head. "People change."

"Hopefully not too much," Sylar suggested softly. She looked away.

* * *

They walked along for the next twenty minutes in silence, Sylar letting Claire take the lead as she was the one that knew the path. Climbing over a long ago fallen tree, careful not to disturb the tendrils of green mold growing over it, she stepped away from the tree line. He followed suit, respecting her actions by doing the same. She put her hands in her pockets as she glided up to the cliff's edge.

The view was always the best during the setting sun. Fiery, yellow-cast orb hanging low on the horizon, it swept its infectiously warm rays over the Earth in a way bringing up much more of a contrast than it had any other time that day. Whereas at its peak it could be blinding, now it lit up those in focus with illuminating clarity, forcing those in the shadows to fall into a consuming darkness altogether different from its earlier dimness.

Inhaling a deep breath, she smelled burning leaves out in the distance, a grilling dinner a bit more of a ways away. The two were different, each unique, her heightened senses picking up on their differences as easily as she learned the art of detecting a window's rippling reflection as being that of the sun or that of a rifle's scope, a rifle filled with tranquilizer, a fact she knew without a doubt after a few close calls.

She exhaled. Spinning around, the immortal cheerleader found Sylar standing roughly two feet away from her, his forever unreadable gaze cast directly at her form and not even grazing the horizon behind her, the one that always managed to captivate her so. She pointed her feet towards the turn in the path that she used running along the cliff. She kept walking.

* * *

This time, a half hour passed before she looked his way again. His presence managed to exude a calming effect over hers. That in and of itself should have _scared_ her. The truth was, she was secretly a tad glad for it. Sylar wouldn't go for a walk in the woods with her for fifty minutes just so he could have a 'ha-hah!' moment and capture her or kill her. He was much too impatient for that, one of the few traits he had that showed him to also be somewhat _childish_, the psychotically driven murderous tendencies aside.

Having another person near was nice. After she starting running, starting in on what could be considered the ground floor of Peter's rescue operations, she had her dad by her side. Soon it became clear that not only could she not hide with her family under different names, in different places, but she couldn't hide with her dad, either. Then it was with Peter. It was a long while before governments outside of the United States and South America took the existence of Specials seriously – or, at least, showed themselves actually reacting to it.

Peter began global operations before long but refused to move out of North America. Claire did the same; as dangerous as the ploy was, this is her _home_. And it wasn't like she would blend in well in Singapore, as Angela subtly suggested. Peter became her companion then. She helped him help Specials, he helped her by simply _being there._

Claire hated to think of herself as a clingy person. It was simply that in a world changing much faster than she had anticipated, it was nice to know there is another person at your side, another person you can simply talk to and have a familiar rapport with when the shit hits the fan.

But she wasn't _desperate_ for it. She had been on her own for going on three years now – she was adjusted just fine. She wasn't going to cling to Sylar now just because she recognized his face in a line-up.

"Speak," she commanded, steps coming more rapidly, soles beating harder against the compact dirt underneath her feet.

"Okay. I'm speaking," he replied sarcastically. It irritated her, only egging on her worked-up nerves. She had talked herself into becoming agitated with him and Sylar, ever egotistical, was only making it worse. She wanted _answers_.

"Shut up, you know that's not what I meant."

"Why so snappish all of a sudden?" He questioned, now using his long legs to their full potential.

Claire glared at him, facing him. Her steps were steady. "The last time I see you, you look like my biological father and tell me you'll pick up the tab after we have dinner at a small Italian joint in Queens. _Remember_? That was almost 35 years ago. Since then you've played your little games and threatened Peter, Angela, and my dad several times, promising vengeance. You drop under the radar like the rest of us – you drop off the _underground_ radar – and haven't been heard of in 30 years.

"So what gives? Why are you here now? What the hell do you want? How did you even find me?"

Sylar kept his vision focused tightly on the pathway in front of them. "You know I have my ways."

"Yeah, and what are those?"

"A medley."

Claire threw up her hands and stopped walking. "Stop with the bullshit and the lies! It's the only thing I've heard for years now and I'm _done_. Tell me the truth right now or I swear to God I will kill you."

He smoothly circled around, facing her with an agitated smirk gracing his features. "If there was a God, why would he condemn you – the _sweet,__ innocent cheerleade_r from Odessa – to dealing with a monster like me? To having parents like Nathan Petrelli and that pyrokinetic bio-mom of yours? Why would he condemn you to running like you are now just because of who you are, _what you are?"_

She launched at him, breath heaving out of her lungs, fingers balling into fists. She struck him across the face for his words, in the chest for his insults, in his stomach for his _truths_. Sylar collapsed under her weight and assaults, knees giving way clumsily and falling to the side. His large hands encapsulated her hips, squeezing tightly. She didn't care if he tried to push her away, if he pulled every power out of his bags of tricks and hurt her, _abused_ her, she just _didn't care._

Frustration with life, with the world, with people, with the _human race _she desperately wanted to assimilate into again boiled to the surface and she unleashed it on him. It was the _least_ he deserved. Claire launched blow after blow against his face, black eyes around his dark sockets truly living up to the description after the tenth one, darkening further than the tell-tale bruised purple. She moved down to his collarbone once she was satisfied with their deformation. He spat blood from his lips, lazy and irregular droplets clinging to his lips as he rotated his head away from the ground after he was done. She could see the purple swimming to blue, green, yellow, and finally to the pinkish hue of his healthy, healed skin.

She _hated_ it. Why can't the hurt stick, just _once_? Why can't she feel the skin scraping off from her knuckles as she beat into him? Why could he groan, eyes widening as she broke his collarbone, while she pounded _harder_ and felt _nothing?_

The tears came long before she registered them. When she broke his collarbone, she moved to his chest, increasing the speed of her punches desperately and reveling in the sound of a cracked rib. His collarbone refastened tightly with a pop and she screamed something resembling an animal's snarl, hands releasing from their white-skinned squeezing in order to take hold of his jaw. Claire twisted his head to the side, pushing and pushing. He wheezed, took a deep breath, and then hacked, the loose dirt from the ground sucked into his lungs and sticking along the organ's tissue sides irritably.

She pushed and _pushed_ and _pushed_. _Nothing_. His body still shook with life, his bones still held with grinding persistence, his hands still held onto her hips with crushing force. "Fuck!" She yelled and simultaneously leaned back, letting go of his jaw, as well as her quest to cause and feel pain. It was _useless_. Her heart hammered in her chest, breath coming in and out in fast rounds. She leaned her head back and stared up at the sky.

It wasn't _fair_.

Underneath her, Sylar struggled for a deep breath as he set about righting his skull's position, coughing loudly. "Fuck," he echoed, chest heaving under her limp palms.

Claire just stared numbly up at the sky. The first interaction she gets with a fellow human in over a year and she beat him senseless – never mind that it is Sylar and that he deserved it and that if he were any normal person then he would have been _dead_ by now. The cold, hard truth of the matter was that she hadn't assaulted him because of who he is – she did it because he hit a nerve with what he said. Life wasn't fair and for some reason she had to deal with crap after dangerous _crap_; she would never have a normal life. People would _never_ accept her.

Something changed, though, halfway into her punches across his face, rocking it grotesquely from side to side. She wanted to _hurt_, to _draw blood_ from both his skin and hers, to _cry out in pain_ like he was in order to show that she was the same, that _she's human too_. And all she got was more proof, more mocking showcases, that he is more of a human in the flesh than she is – she can hurt, yes, she can draw blood, yes, but she can't feel _bad_. She can't feel bad emotionally, mentally, or physically. It all felt right, like as if she was only painting her damn nails.

She took hold of his wrists and pried his hands off her hips. The blonde lifted her jacket's hem and looked down. All healed; not even a fingernail scratch. She climbed off of him and kicked him in the side for one last good measure. "Thirty years and you've made me a shell! _A shell_! I'm practically suicidal!" She vented, pacing alongside his reduced form.

"I didn't make you anything," he argued, tiredly snapping his words right back at her. After expelling another shuddering breath, Sylar rose to his feet.

"Yes you did!" She screeched, getting in his now-standing face with her own, her reverent tan creased in anguish and rage. "You're the one who revealed us all, who _caused this_!"

"Bullshit! I didn't cause them to round us up, to exterminate us in camps!" He spun around, took a step or two away from her, and then spun right back. Sylar barked out a laugh, running a hand through his hair jerkily. "It's called _free will_, Claire; my responsibility for this mess stops after I ran out of the Senate and disappeared from view. _You're welcome._"

She stalked away from him_. "_Do us both a favor and _stay the hell away_."

* * *

She ran.

After so much running, these walks were designed to clear her head, to give her peaceful reverie. Nothing ever turned out the way it was planned to be. To her surprise, Sylar disappeared from sight. Not that that meant he was gone; she knew well enough that seeing was not proof of existence. The thought almost made her laugh. It reminded her of the age-old question 'If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?' The tree makes a sound to the animals, the squirrels and the birds, but not to you, the city-dweller living fifty miles from the nearest forest. Of course, that brings up the complicated questions like if 'no one' is limited to humans or every living organism capable of hearing.

That, in a nutshell, was the greatest and simplest analogy for her life – a question answered with another, a disaster followed by another, a death followed by another painstaking funeral. There were no breaks between the debate because real and honest debates weren't scripted events – they occurred without pause, blow for blow. Again,_ like her life_.

Claire pumped her petite legs faster, hard rubber sliding over damp rocks cast aside from the stream. She had just beat up Sylar. The great boogeyman came to visit her for a still undisclosed reason and she beat him up. But that wasn't the point – he had _let_ her beat him up. He hadn't done anything to stop it; dare she say he even _encouraged_ it. He'd wrapped his hands around her hips and grounded her on top of him as if he wanted her to beat the living shit out of him.

Thinking about it like that, she would almost say it was perverted. Except she knew that it was different – their dynamic is different than that. Hell, if she had to guess then she would say he wanted to pain because he could no longer inflict it. As if it brought him some kind of thrill, or something. Okay, so _that part_ is perverted.

Whatever; it made no difference. They're both screwed eventually down-line, one way or the other, what with the immortality clause in their life contracts and all that.

Slowing as she came up to the tree-line edge, she held up her hands. Perfectly soft and moisturized, not a scar on them. That wasn't true – she had scars. Her ability hadn't kicked in until she was sixteen. Claire had the scar from when she'd cut herself with scissors in art class at the age of four, a spattering of burns from various cooking and baking activities across her first sixteen years of life, a hook-looking thin line of a scar under the fold of her right thumb after a bad accident with Mr Muggles' leash – he had started running while she was talking on the phone and the leash had caught, pulling her thumb much harder than she had previously given the little rat dog credit for; she had needed three stitches. But those scars weren't the same thing; they weren't what she was looking for. The ones she was looking for would never be the ones she'd find.

She stepped through the tree-line, leaving the stream, and into the open-field next to the cabin. She approached quietly. Nothing looked out of place. The dead leaves crinkled under her shoes. Padding softly up the back steps and onto the deck, she peeked into the window next to the door. No activity inside. Testing the knob, she found it unlocked.

That wasn't how she left it.

Removing her knife from her side, she entered cautiously.

"No one's here," Sylar said from the kitchen filling the open space to her left at the same time she spotted him. She jumped anyway, her muscles being a bundle of uncertain nerves ever since he showed up.

"Except you."

"Except me," he concurred, sipping out of a floral-patterned mug as he leaned against the counter. The sight was ridiculous.

Claire glanced around as she closed the door. Warily, she slid the knife back into its resting place on her side. She always had one on her; it would be opaquely suicidal not to. "I didn't invite you in."

He wore that same half-smirk, gesturing by moving his mug outward from his chest. "And I'm not a vampire."

She mockingly smiled at that. Crossing her arms, she stated, "Look, Sylar, I don't want to do this anymore, okay? Just tell me what you want so I can say 'yes' or 'no' and you can be on your way."

His chocolate eyes matched hers intensely. Suddenly, he whirled around, facing away from her. "Tea?"

Claire sighed; she was getting nowhere. It was a useless thing, fighting his games. "Yeah, sure."

"Why do you even have tea?" He wondered aloud, seeming to only absently ask her. "Why not coffee?"

She sat on the arm of the sofa, casting her gaze across the backyard as she looked through the window. "Coffee gives me the jitters – tea has less caffeine."

"And it tastes better," he added with his personal preference.

Her lips quirked minutely into a smile. "And it tastes better."

She could have sworn she heard him mutter "Now we're getting somewhere." She chose to ignore that, whether it was a true translation or not of whatever he said under his breath.

After less than a minute passed he walked over, handing her another mug. "Thank you." Eying it for a minute, she threw caution to the wind. Any poison wouldn't last, would it? Considering she could regrow limbs, she felt safe with ingesting some rat poison. He continued to stand there, practically towering over. He seemed unaware of its effect, too. Claire stood, skirting away from him and bee-lining for the back door once again.

Sylar joined her as she walked down the back steps and across the lawn. Unzipping her jacket, she let it hang open loosely as a gust of cool air swept over the top of the lake and around them. They sat on the edge of the dock, the blonde pulling her knees up and resting the cup of weak tea on her covered toes.

"I never said sorry – _to you_."

She scoffed, raising her head to look at him. "For what? There's _a lot_ you should apologize for."

He hunched his shoulders forward, leaning elbows on knees and casting her a sidelong look. "Well, I never said sorry for my ill-timed shapeshifting. I felt _insane_ after living in my head while my mind thought I was someone else for so long. I saw my chance and I just – I took it."

"That apology's not just for me – you need to say it to everyone. But they'd probably drive a railroad spike into the back of your head. It's tempting for me, even if I'd just be alone forever," she admitted to the already known truth, taking a sip. The warm liquid slid down her throat, soothingly opening it up.

He smirked at her creative analogy. "Changed spots."

Claire raised a petite, carefully sculpted eyebrow at his confession. Why should that surprise her? He was Sylar – he found the faults in something and worked them tirelessly to the point where he could manipulate them like putty in his hands. He stood quickly, taking off his jean jacket. She leaned away, towards the dock's ledge. "What are you doing?" She asked, a small squeak popping into the last word when he raised up his dark gray T-shirt. No one can judge her for that – it's been a while since she's talked to anyone, let alone found them... well... _attractive_. Her dad was probably rolling in his grave right now; not that she would ever _act_ on anything. The man beside her is a serial killer, her being one of his victims; acting on anything would be decidedly crazy. Of course, dwindling down their history to those one-sided descriptions wasn't exactly accurate, _either_.

He turned around, jabbing a finger between two notches of his spine, somewhere between lower to mid back. "It takes a jab here, angled two hundred degrees, five inches long." She only stared, dumbfounded. Sylar turned around, dropping the hem of his shirt. His dark eyes grabbed hers in a mesmerizing gaze. "That's my kill spot."

She stood, leaving the tea on the worn boards at her feet, crossing her arms uncomfortably. Years ago she would have been elated with this information. Now it only left a sour feeling in her stomach for reasons she was not consciously privy to. "Why are you telling me this?" She demanded of him.

Speaking simply, he answered in a way that can only be described as truthfully, "Because you're the only person I trust."

"You trust me?" She asked with bewilderment clear on her face and tone.

Sylar smiled. Not a smirk – _a smile._ "If you still wanted me dead, you would have tried to kill me already. But you don't, just like I don't want you dead. You know why I came and it's a feeling you've come to terms with a lot faster than I have." His smile faltered, genuine fear alighting in his eyes for the first time that she's ever seen. Her arms fell to her sides. "I don't want to be alone for eternity."

A lump formed in her throat. The thought that she was having an emotional heart-to-heart with a psychotic serial killer, with the same man she nearly killed twenty minutes ago, never crossed her mind. "Me neither," she whispered back.

"I _am_ sorry – for hurting _you_."

She shifted on her feet, unable to pull her eyes from his. The man in front of her isn't the same Sylar she knew; but he wasn't an impersonator, either. The reveal and subsequent hunting didn't just take her and Peter and Angela and her dad and all the other innocents off-guard – it took the great bad boogeyman, too. _He_ had to run too. _He_ was alone too. _He_ was facing an eternity of this too. Thirty years may seem like nothing and in the schemes of things for her, she knew it wasn't much, however these past thirty years hung heavily on her mind, memories rehashed day in and day out, because they gave her a futuristic mold of what to come, what to expect. For an _eternity._ Her eyelashes fluttered from the multitude of emotions exploding throughout her body. "How long has it been since you've last killed?" She asked again, voice strained.

"Two years, eight months, thirteen days, and 14 hours," he whispered.

"How long since you last enjoyed it?"

He didn't dare blink for the full minute they locked eyes – hers unconsciously pleading, his searching to understand how much this question, and subsequently his answer, meant to her. "Four years ago this Thursday," he finally answered, voice intentionally monotone. "Burned down an apartment building when another group came for me. I was running out the back when someone followed me out. The smoke was heavy, I couldn't tell who they were – I snapped their neck and tossed them against the wall, _satisfied_ that I'd now lost their tail. I had to be sure... so I approached.

"It was a woman; lying underneath her was a young boy, three, maybe four, years old. He was dead from the force." Sylar tried to shrug nonchalantly. "I've sawed peoples heads off with my mind, removed brains from skulls, stabbed, shot, tortured, but something about... _that_." He smirked mockingly, mocking _himself_. "I'm running like a coward and I killed an innocent kid like some_ scared animal. _Kind of puts things into perspective."

Claire could only look back at him, lips hovering between being fully open and fully closed, mouth at an impasse for the proper words of response. There were no proper words – not anymore. He killed her biological parents, assaulted her, killed her former best friend at homecoming, terrorized her family, and did the same to countless others, people that tried to be normal while existing with their abilities.

Yet here he was, looking so... _lost_. So regrettable and strangely somehow powerless and above all else resigned to her judgment, entangled within that a sense of openness, like he _wanted_ it. She shouldn't forgive him and, indeed, could not find herself saying those words anytime soon. But the word 'hate' was loosing its adhesion for proper application. And she really didn't want to be alone, either.

His company was tolerable, companionship even a bit calming. He was powerful, defensible, and simply _here_ for an eternity. They'd already gotten off on the worst foot ever – it's only up from there, right?

"Stay for a while."

**XxxxxxxxxxX**


End file.
